My mother and I took her mother to decorate the family graves for Memorial Day. This is a sacred duty in Grandma's eyes. This year I asked her if I could take pictures of the headstones and then ask her about the people later at home, so that I could write it down for my kids. She was agreeable.

This day we went to a set of graves that I had never seen before. I had been there to bury one of those relatives, but the stones had been covered then. A mother, father, and son lay buried close together, their plain stones engraved only with their respective birth and death dates.

I looked at the birth and death dates on the son's stone and asked Grandma what had happened. Other than knowing that he had existed, I had never known anything about him.

He had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to playing football in college that fall. He had a pain in his side, just a bothersome ache. The doctor wanted to remove his appendix. His friend had just had the same operation with no trouble. The boy only asked the doctor one question: would he be able to play ball by September? The doctor assured him that he would be running around as though nothing had happened. The boy agreed to the surgery.

The surgery was botched. There is no other word for what happened. The appendix was inflamed, and in trying to remove it, the doctor ruptured it himself. The doctor also nicked a vein, or maybe it was an artery. The doctor closed the wound without noticing the bleeding.

The mother and father were told the boy would be just fine. An hour or so later, a nurse realized the boy was dying. The boy was bleeding to death. He was rushed back to surgery. The bleeding was stopped. In addition to the infection already present, the boy was critically low on blood. He had been subjected to anesthesia twice in one night. He was strong boy, the doctor told his parents. There was still hope.

Infection started to kill the boy. There was a drug that could have saved him, but that drug was not allocated for people like this boy. His parents couldn't buy it for him, even if they had sold everything they owned. It was simply unavailable. The doctor explained why. His parents accepted this news and began holding round the clock vigils with the boy.

While he lay dying, the boy turned 18 years old. They congratulated him on becoming a man. Everyone in the family went to see him. Everyone remarked on how he was still smiling in spite of it all. After 18 days of suffering, the boy told his parents that he simply had to go home. They agreed. His father helped him to get dressed for the trip. The boy asked if he could sit in his father's lap. His father held him, rocked him, kissed him. The boy died surrounded by love.

In all the time I had known the parents before they also died, they had never told me this story.

We stood in silence for a little while. My mother murmered something, and Grandma nodded. Then I understood the importance of the last date on the boy's stone. The date itself explained why the boy had died when a drug that could have saved him was withheld.

He died in July, 1942. The United States was at war. The drug was sulfa, and all supplies of it were directed to our war wounded. My mother had murmered that the war would have taken him if the illness had not.

All over this country, parents were losing sons the same age. This boy's parents were "lucky" in a way -- their son had not died in terror on the bloody mud of a battlefield half a world away. I believe this boy was as much a casualty of the war as the ones who died fighting, but he and his parents were spared even more pain and sorrow.

As I stood over the graves of a mother, a father, and their son, my only prayer was that they had been reunited. I hoped the pain of all the years apart was erased for them. I realized that all I want from an afterlife is the chance to find who I lost, and the certainty of never losing them again.

-- helen (sad@this.hour), May 28, 2000

Answers

Helen, that's a very touching story. Thanks for sharing it with us.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), May 28, 2000.

Thanks also, Helen. A lovely remembrence for this holiday.

-- (sis@home.zzz), May 28, 2000.

"...in the shure and certain hope of the ressuriction..."

"...oh grave where is thy victory, oh death where is thy sting..."

-- Greybear (greybear@home.,com), May 29, 2000.

"I realized that all I want from an afterlife is the chance to find who I lost, and the certainty of never losing them again."

Helen, if I catch a glimpse of my ex-husband, you can bet I'll be seeking the exit sign.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000.

(((((Helen))))) Thank you for sharing this story. Sometimes we forget the price that was paid at home too. BTW, you are an excellent writer!

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), June 01, 2000.